Week in Review

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Week in Review

07/03/2021

For the week 6/28-7/2

[Posted 10:00 PM ET, Friday]

Note: StocksandNews has significant ongoing costs and your support is greatly appreciated.  Please click on the gofundme link or send a check to PO Box 990, New Providence, NJ 07974.    

***Special thanks this week to Brad K. and Barb S. for their ongoing support.

Edition 1,159

So remember when I told you how our beloved Dr. Bortrum had a ‘false positive’ Covid test when he was first admitted to the hospital back on April 19?  And how that precluded me from seeing him the first week, which to me was critical, until he then had a series of negative tests?

And remember how I told you last week that I had done my job in the end, get his body to Rutgers / Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJ) to fulfill Bortrum’s final wish…donate his body for medical research?

Days after Dad’s death, I reconfirmed with RWJ that the test they had performed on him when they received the body was clean.  Phew.

Monday, I received a letter from my new best friend at Rutgers, R.S., that read in part, “I would like to express our appreciation for the enlightened philosophy, which motivated the donor’s wish to further scientific medicine.”

The day after, now Tuesday, I received the death certificate.  The last cause listed, clearly carelessly, was “Covid.”

It was the hospice who gave the information to Rutgers, who then put it together.

A doctor at the hospice, who in the 17 days that Dad was there never reached out to me, despite all my trips to see him, had read “Covid” on an Overlook hospital readout and assumed this was a partial cause.

This was despite the fact that my father had tested negative multiple times at the hospice, to the extent that the nurse who was the ‘case manager’ said she didn’t feel compelled to wear a mask around Bortrum, while I did to do my part to keep him healthy.

I thought nothing of ‘Covid’ being on the death certificate.  It wasn’t one of the two primary causes.

Thursday afternoon, yesterday, I receive a call from my brother.  “Did you get your copy of this certified letter I just received from Rutgers?”

“No, why?”

My brother got a copy because as the eldest son, he is receiving whatever remains are left over from Dad, potentially years down the road. 

The letter said that because of Covid being on the death certificate they couldn’t accept Bortrum’s body and that he was being cremated!

[Drat]!  I told my brother I had to make some calls.  I called Rutgers in a panic.  Thankfully R.S. was there and quickly assembled a team, put me on speaker, and the first thing I asked was, “Tell me you didn’t cremate my father!”

“We haven’t.”

I then went off for ten minutes without letting them get a word in edgewise, explaining everything that transpired over the nine weeks of hell and how he had that initial false positive and every other test after, easily at least 11 in many different facilities, had been negative.  I couldn’t believe that a doctor would be so lazy as to mark it down after seeing what should have been listed as a false positive on day one, let alone knowing the results from her own facility!

I then called the hospice.  Luckily my case nurse was there, she knew Dad had no Covid, but she explained the doctor saw the result and had to put it down.

“No she didn’t!”

The doctor, gutless, didn’t call me.

It was now getting late Thursday afternoon and I knew with the holiday coming up that there would be staffing issues starting Friday.

I called the office of the president of Overlook Hospital and got an executive assistant.  She patiently heard me out, took my number, and I was sure she would tell her boss who of course shouldn’t want any problems.  I had an attorney teed up.  She then referred me to the patient care office, I got a voice mail, the office hours were 8:00-4:00, it was after 4:00, and I expected a call Friday morning.  I knew RWJ was not going to cremate Dad just yet after my detailed description of the facts.

Friday morning, nothing from Overlook.  I heard from my friend R.S. that she was contacting the people I talked about on the initial call Thursday with the ‘team.’

Finally, around 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, R.S. told me the hospice released their Covid tests.  I needed something from Overlook.  I called the office of the president, got a different assistant, told her my story, and she promised she would get right on it.  At 3:30, a representative from Overlook’s risk management department called, she convinced me the records department was putting together all their Covid results for RWJ, and I relayed the information to R.S.

Around 4:30, R.S. said she got the records from Overlook.  Dad would be accepted to the program.

I’m mentally, and physically, exhausted.  But Dad deserved no less.

A special thank you to my brother and sis-in-law for their key support throughout.

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Among my many mistakes with “Week in Review,” I have been years early in expressing my concerns that China would one day make its move to take Taiwan.

But that day is now near, as every expert in the world is all too aware.  Maybe not for another year or two, but as long as China’s current leader is in power, you can book it.

All you have to do is see what he’s done to Hong Kong in a little over a year, and what he’s done to the Uighurs, despite global condemnation.  The guy doesn’t care.

So it was that this week, in an hour-long address from Tiananmen Square on Thursday, celebrating the centenary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party, President Xi Jinping warned that foreign forces attempting to bully the nation will “get their heads bashed,” and hailed a “new world” created by its people.

Xi pledged to build up China’s military, committed to the “reunification” of Taiwan and said social stability would be ensured in Hong Kong while protecting China’s security and sovereignty.

“The people of China are not only good at destroying the old world, they have also created a new world,” said Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic.  “Only socialism can save China.”

Xi said the people of China would never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate them.

“Anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Xi said, sparking applause from the invited audience of 70,000.

[Another interpretation of the text: “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the great wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”]

China, whose rapid military modernization has fueled growing worry in the region and the West, will build up its armed forces to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development, elevating them to world-class standards, Xi said.

“We must accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces,” Xi added, he also being chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the country’s armed forces.  Xi was in full Mao garb.

And most worrisomely for the global economy, Xi said resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete “reunification” is an “unswerving historical task” of the party.

“All sons and daughters of China, including compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must work together and move forward in solidarity, resolutely smashing any ‘Taiwan independence’ plots,” he said.

Regarding Hong Kong and Macau, Xi said China “will stay true to the letter and spirit of the principle of ‘One Country, two Systems,’ under which the two are promised a high degree of autonomy.”

Another bald-faced lie.  The sweeping national security law on Hong Kong a year ago has seen Beijing drastically tighten its grip on the once freewheeling financial hub.

In case the Chinese people needed reminding that they have zero political freedom, Xi said, “China’s success hinges on the party.  Any attempt to divide the party from the Chinese people is bound to fail.”

More below on this topic.

Biden Agenda, Dem Bits

--Republican Senate negotiators on an infrastructure deal on Sunday welcomed President Biden’s withdrawal of his threat to veto a $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said he and his fellow negotiators were “blindsided” by Biden’s comments last Thursday after he and senators announced a rare bipartisan compromise on a measure to fix the nation’s roads, bridges and ports.  “I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along the way,” he said in an interview with ABC.

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said he hoped lawmakers could move beyond the controversy, ditto Sen. Mitt Romney.

But the progressive wing of the Democratic party is not letting go and we’ll see how it plays out after the Fourth of July recess.

--Split along party lines, the House launched a new investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on Wednesday, approving a special committee to probe the violent attack as police officers who were injured fighting former President Donald Trump’s supporters watched from the gallery above.

The vote to form the panel was 222-190, with Republicans objecting that majority Democrats would be in charge. The action came after Senate Republicans blocked creation of an independent commission that would have been evenly split between the two parties.

Only two Republicans, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her position in GOP leadership because of her criticism of Trump, and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, voted in favor of forming the panel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then put Rep. Cheney on the committee, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened Cheney’s, and Kinzinger’s, committee assignments, to which Kinzinger said, “Who gives a shit?”

Liz Cheney:

“The attack on January 6th was an unprecedented assault on Congress and the functioning of our democratic process.  That day, almost all of us recognized immediately the gravity of what had occurred.  Since January 6th, the courage of my party’s leaders has faded.  But the threat to our Republic has not.  On an almost daily basis, Donald Trump repeats the same statements that provoked violence before.  His attacks on our Constitution are accelerating.  Our responsibility is to confront these threats, not appease and deflect.

“Earlier this month, along with 34 other House Republicans, I supported the establishment of a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack of January 6th.  As I’ve said before, that would have been the best way to address the danger to the institutions of our democracy.  Although that bill passed the House, it was defeated in the Senate. It is right to be wary of an overtly partisan inquiry.  But Congress is obligated to conduct a full investigation of the most serious attack on our Capitol since 1814.  Our nation, and the families of the brave law enforcement officers who were injured defending us or died following the attack, deserve answers. I believe this select committee is our only remaining option.  I will vote to support it.

“This investigation can only succeed if it is sober, professional, and non-partisan. The threat to our democracy is far too grave for grandstanding or political maneuvering. The Committee should issue and enforce subpoenas promptly, hire skilled counsel, and do its job thoroughly and expeditiously.  The American people need and deserve a full accounting. We must ensure that what happened on January 6, 2021, never happens again.”

--The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for states to enact voting restrictions, endorsing Republican-backed measures in Arizona that a lower court had decided disproportionately burdened Black, Latino and Native American voters and handing a defeat to Democrats who had challenged the policies.

The 6-3 ruling, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority, held that the restrictions on early ballot collection by third parties and where absentee ballots may be cast did not violate the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. 

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision.

The decision comes at a time when states are pursuing a series of Republican-backed voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud and irregularities in his 2020 loss to now-President Joe Biden.

The ruling represented a victory for the Arizona Republican Party and the state’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich.  They had appealed a lower court ruling that had deemed the restrictions unlawful.

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, clarified the limits of the law and how courts may analyze claims of voter discrimination.  The “mere fact there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote,” Alito said.

In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten – in order to weaken – a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses. What is tragic is that the court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting.’”

The Arizona legal battle concerned a specific provision called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bans voting policies or practices that result in racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.  Arizona Republicans said in court papers that voting restrictions have partisan effects and impact elections.

Republicans also said that “race-neutral” regulations on the time, place or manner of an election do not deny anyone their right to vote and that federal law does not require protocols to maximize the participation of racial minorities.

Trump World

--Donald Trump’s company and his longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, were charged Thursday with tax-related crimes stemming from a New York investigation into the former president’s business dealings.  Weisselberg then surrendered to Manhattan prosecutors as he prepares to “fight” the charges.

The charges involve non-monetary benefits the company gave to top executives, including use of apartments, cars and school tuition as part of a 15-year scheme to help its executives evade taxes by compensating them with fringe benefits ‘off the books.’

Weisselberg was charged with avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in perks that should have been reported as income.

“To put it bluntly, this was a sweeping and audacious illegal payments scheme,” Carey Dunne, general counsel for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., said during an arraignment in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Dunne said the indictment described a deliberate effort by senior executives to underreport their income, in concert with the Trump Organization, by accepting secret perks that did not show up on tax documents.

Prosecutors have been scrutinizing Trump’s tax records, subpoenaing documents and interviewing witnesses, including Trump insiders, such as Michael Cohen, and company executives.

While the indictment was narrowly focused on the tax scheme, the charges could lay the groundwork for the next steps in the wider investigation, which will focus on the former president.

Prior to the unsealing of the indictment, Jason Miller, a longtime former senior adviser to Trump, spun the looming charges as “politically terrible for the Democrats.”

“They told their crazies and their supplicants in the mainstream media this was about President Trump.  Instead, their Witch Hunt is persecuting an innocent 80-year-old man for maybe taking free parking!”  Weisselberg is 73.

Trump had blasted the investigation in a statement Monday, deriding Vance’s office as “rude, nasty, and totally biased” in their treatment of Trump company lawyers, representatives, and long-term employees.

Trump, in the statement, said the company’s actions were “things that are standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime” and that Vance’s probe was an investigation “in search of a crime.”

Without Weisselberg’s cooperation, Donald Trump would appear to be in no direct danger.

To me, the issue is whether the Trump Organization manipulated property values to obtain favorable loans while also reducing tax rates.

Michael Cohen has acknowledged meeting with New York prosecutors multiple times in cooperation with their investigation.

Michael J. Stern / USA TODAY…Stern a former federal prosecutor…

“Trump’s original groundswell of political support came largely from his reputation as a business whiz who promised to ‘Make America Great Again’ by recreating his own financial success on a bigger scale for millions of low- and middle-income Americans who were working hard but struggling to survive.

“Indictment of the Trump Organization by a grand jury of ordinary citizens screams that Trump’s financial success came not from his business savvy but from cheating. And while the indictment itself might not be a condemnation of the whole of Trump’s company, headlines like this are: ‘Donald Trump’s family business indicted on criminal charges.’ The indictment is unlikely to result in Trump losing support with the cultish part of his base, but it could shake loose some who were holding on by the worn threads of their MAGA caps.

“More important than its effect on his supporters, indictment of the Trump Organization signals that Trump may be in personal jeopardy. The Trump Organization attorney, Ron Fischetti, has acknowledged that his conversations with prosecutors make clear that Thursday’s indictment was not the last and that Trump is not ‘out of the woods yet.’….

“It’s impossible to know whether the Manhattan DA believes he has sufficient evidence to indict these activities under New York law.  But, it is widely believed that Weisselberg holds the map to the grounds on which Trump’s long list of criminal allegations are buried. If Weisselberg tells what he knows, he could bring Trump down.

“So far, Weisselberg has resisted efforts to persuade him to cooperate. But the prospect of imprisonment for a 73-year-old man has a way of changing things – especially when the beneficiary of his dirty work continues to flaunt a life of luxury….

“Remember, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pledged to take a bullet for Trump…until federal authorities closed in on him….

“If Trump were smart, he would say nothing about the substance of the indictment.  But Trump being Trump, he will not be able to keep his mouth shut, and that has left many of us anticipating a delicious disaster.

“If Trump defends Weisselberg’s ‘off the books’ compensation, he will be implicating himself in the tax fraud. But if Trump says any unreported compensation took place without his knowledge or approval, he will be throwing Weisselberg under the proverbial bus at the same time his own freedom requires the good graces of Weisselberg’s silence.  ‘Alexa, what is another word for ‘delicious’?’ ….

“The Manhattan District Attorney did what no one else, including Congress, could do – he got Trump’s financial records and used them to hold Trump’s business accountable. And the DA managed to accomplish this despite a Trump appeal to the Supreme Court, where Trump stacked the deck by appointing one-third of the justices.

“Trump’s strategic battle with the DA has just begun, and so far the DA has made all the right moves.  It’s time for Trump to get nervous.  Finally.”

--Paul Mulshine / Star-Ledger…Mulshine a hard-core conservative…

“It’s been almost a century since the great H.L. Mencken wrote the obituary of William Jennings Bryan, the one-time presidential contender who died in Dayton, Tenn., shortly after the Scopes Monkey Trial.

“ ‘It was plain to everyone, when Bryan came to Dayton, that his great days were behind him – that he was now definitely an old man, and headed at last for silence,’ Mencken wrote.  ‘There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearance; he somehow seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him carefully shaved, and clad in immaculate linen.  And the hair was gone from the dome of his head, and it had begun to fall out, too, behind his ears.’

“Donald Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio expressed a similar sentiment in terms any modern-day American can comprehend.  In a CNN interview, D’Antonio proclaimed that Trump has entered his ‘Fat Elvis Period.’….

“The most obvious sign was that Centennial Institute poll of likely Republican voters in the 2024 presidential election.  It showed Trump trailing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.  The margin was a mere three points, but the poll shows that the rank-and-file of the party has already figured out that DeSantis is a much more promising candidate than Trump.

“As for the party leaders, few will say in public that they wish he would just go away.  But in private I’ve yet to hear any conservative leader say otherwise.

“Of late, some are starting to say so in public.  In an interview with The Atlantic, former Attorney General Bill Barr said of Trump’s claims of a stolen election, ‘If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it.  But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there,’ Barr said.  ‘It was all bullshit!’

“It was indeed, and last week former Vice President Mike Pence elaborated on that Thursday in remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“ ‘Now there are those in our party who believe that, in my position as presiding officer over the joint session, that I possessed the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by the states,’ Pence said.  ‘But the Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority before the joint session of Congress.

“The No. 1 proponent of the view that Pence had such authority was of course Trump.

“Trump is notorious for not reading the material about which he is speaking.  In this instance he avoided reading the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives the states, not the Congress, the power to certify electoral votes.

“That was done on Dec. 14, and there was nothing either Trump or Pence could have done about it on Jan. 6.  Congress simply watched the votes being counted, and when one candidates gets more than 50 percent, that candidate is the winner.

“If Trump had taken that reality into account, he might have hired lawyers smart enough to press his case before that December deadline. But that didn’t happen, as Barr relayed to Jonathan Karl, in the ABC correspondent’s upcoming book.

“ ‘Instead, you have a clown show,’ he said in an excerpt about Trump’s lawyers.  ‘No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it.  It’s just a joke.’

“As jokes go, it reminds me of that classic about the Fat Elvis.  The King is playing Las Vegas when he leans over to talk to a lady in the front row.

“ ‘Can I ask you something, miss?’ Elvis says. ‘You gonna finish those fries?’

“Trump’s post-election political gluttony should be seen in that light.  He had every opportunity to admit that the Democrats had outsmarted him at his own game.  He should have laughed off the defeat and promised he’d have better luck next time.

“Instead he became ‘a walking malignancy,’ as Mencken described Bryan.  What has most alienated the party faithful is Trump’s penchant for lashing out at his fellow Republicans.

“The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Trump ‘appeared to shoot a blank’ last weekend when he attacked two Republican leaders in the run-up to the state GOP’s convention.  When the two spoke, ‘It was as though Trump had said nothing at all.  There were no boos.’

“Trump may not like to read, but I’d suggest someone read Mencken’s assessment of Bryan to him:

“ ‘He was a cad undiluted… Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.’

“No one would ever say that about Elvis.”

Trump attacked Mitch McConnell this week, after reports that McConnell asked William Barr to stop Trump from spreading election conspiracies.

McConnell urged the then-attorney general to publicly speak out at the end of 2020 as he feared Trump was damaging the GOP’s hopes in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia, according to a forthcoming book.

So Trump hit out at the Senate minority leader.

“Had Mitch McConnell fought for the Presidency like he should have, there would right now be Presidential Vetoes on all of the phased Legislation that he has proved to be incapable of stopping,” Trump said in a statement.

“Not to mention, he lost two Senatorial seats in Georgia, making the Republicans the minority in the Senate.”

Trump added, “He never fought for the White House and blew it for the Country. Too bad I backed him in Kentucky, he would have been primaried and lost!

“Based on press reports, he convinced his buddy, Bill Barr, to get the corrupt (based on massive amounts of evidence that the Fake News refuses to mention!) election done, over with, and sealed for Biden, ASAP!”

The claims were made in interviews for journalist Jonathan Karl’s book Betrayal, which is about the final days of the Trump administration.

“Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell told Barr, according to interviews for the book, “and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now.  But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation.  You are really the only one who can do it.”

Saturday, at a rally in Wellington, Ohio, his first official campaign-style rally of this kind since leaving office, Trump reprised his greatest election grievances and baseless claims of fraud.

“This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century,” Trump told a crowd of thousands at Ohio’s Lorain County Fairgrounds, where he began making good on his pledge to exact revenge on those who voted for his historic second impeachment.

The event was held to support Max Miller, a former White House aide who is challenging Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for his congressional seat. Gonzalez was one of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building.  Trump has vowed to back those who run against them.

But Trump spent most of the rally fixating on the 2020 election, insisting he won, even though he lost by 7 million votes and a landslide in the Electoral College, as confirmed by state and local election officials, let alone William Barr and numerous judges, including some he appointed.

“The 2020 presidential election was rigged.  We won that election in a landslide.”

Hey, Mike Lindell was there!  The crowd hailed him as a hero.  And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked the crowd who their president is, and they boomed loudly, “Trump!”

“President Trump is my president, too,” she said.

There’s just nothing more to say.

The Pandemic

Russia, Indonesia, South Africa and Thailand are among the spots hitting either new case or death highs, or both.  Just look at some of the charts.

And when you look at Africa, since day one some of us wondered when Covid would overwhelm the continent.  That day could be here.  Only 1.1% of 1.3 billion people are vaccinated.

The other issue is the spreading Delta variant.  I have been voicing my concern on the issues looming this fall as Covid spikes in the states where the vaccination rate is low, and how this will be a huge political issue, if authorities attempt to issue temporary lockdowns.  Or if schoolteachers refuse anew to do in-person learning because the kids, particularly Grades 6 and under, either aren’t eligible to be vaccinated or haven’t taken the shots.

I think about SEC football games, packed stadiums with 60,000+ where few of the students may be vaccinated, SEC states for the most part among those with the lowest vaccination rates.

Personally, I have no fears, being a Moderna Baby.  But politically, I see things getting very ugly.

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…3,979,440
USA…620,979
Brazil…522,068
India…401,068
Mexico…233,248
Peru…192,687
Russia…136,565
UK…128,189
Italy…127,615
France…111,135
Colombia…107,723
Argentina…95,382
Germany…91,573
Iran…84,516
Spain…80,911
Poland…75,065
South Africa…61,332
Indonesia…59,534
Ukraine…52,424
Turkey…49,829
Romania…33,898
Chile…32,809
Czechia…30,308
Hungary…29,992
Canada…26,338
Belgium…25,180
Philippines…24,973
Pakistan…22,345
Ecuador…21,623

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. Daily death tolls…Sun. 112; Mon. 164; Tues. 294; Wed. 295; Thurs. 319; Fri. 322.

Covid Bytes

--India confirmed it has suffered 400,000 deaths from Covid-19, but the figure announced Friday, exactly in line with the worldometers data, is believed to be a fraction of the true total.

While new cases have been on the decline, authorities are now preparing for another possible wave of infection around September and are trying to ramp up vaccination, with less than 5% of India’s people fully immunized.

There is some hope on this front, with India having two big suppliers, Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech, which are ramping up production, and five other vaccines potentially being made available in the coming months.

--Thursday, Johnson & Johnson said its one-dose shot protects against the Delta variant, citing lab tests of vaccine recipients’ blood. And amid concern that their shot might require a booster, the company said its immune response lasts eight months and counting.

But as alluded to above, the variant poses the most danger in regions where vaccinations are sparse.

The variants “are able to find any gaps in our protection,” Dr. Hilary Babcock of Washington University at St. Louis said, pointing to how hospital beds and intensive care units in Missouri’s least-vaccinated southwestern counties suddenly are filling – mostly with adults under 40 who never received the shots.

--Moderna said this week its vaccine is effective against all variants of Covid-19.

And both Moderna and Pfizer said their vaccines created a long-lasting immunity that may protect people from Covid for years, a new study found.

Which means that people who received the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters so long as variants do not drastically evolve.

--At least 10 of the 26 doctors in Indonesia who died from Covid-19 in June had received both doses of the vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd., a medical association said, raising questions about the Chinese-made shot that is being used in many parts of the developing world.

Indonesia’s Medical Association is still working to verify the vaccination status of the other 16.

Around 90% of Indonesian doctors – roughly 160,000 in all – have been vaccinated with Sinovac’s shot, according to the association.

--Meanwhile, as part of the ongoing confusion over mask wearing, the World Health Organization has urged fully vaccinated people to continue wearing masks indoors and practice social distancing as the Delta variant surges in many parts of the world.

The Centers for Disease Control, however, told vaccinated Americans in May that they no longer needed to wear masks indoors. CDC officials pointed to the guidance Monday and gave no indication it would change.

But Los Angeles County, having fully reopened recently, said Monday, “Until we better understand how and to who the Delta variant is spreading, everyone should focus on maximum protection.”  The variant accounts for 50% of active cases in Los Angeles, officials said the other day.

--On the positive side, Monday, Italy lifted its outdoor mask mandate as cases drop and vaccinations rise in the country.

--But Hong Kong said it will ban all passenger flights from the U.K. as it seeks to curb the spread of new variants.

--Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired a Health Ministry official on Wednesday after a report that the official asked for a bribe in a vaccine deal, the latest graft accusation to rock the government amid investigations of its pandemic response.  With a death toll in excess of 500,000 and more new cases daily than any other country, anger is mounting in Brazil over missed opportunities to buy vaccines.  Accusations of corruption undercutting such efforts have poured fuel on the fire, triggering new calls for Bolsonaro’s impeachment.

Separately, Brazil’s unemployment rate held steady at a historic high of 14.7% in the three months through April, figures showed on Wednesday.

Wall Street and the Economy

The Federal Reserve has more data to chew on when it comes to tapering its bond purchases, let alone hike interest rates for a first time in years.

Fed officials at their June 15-16 policy meeting reaffirmed plans to continue holding short-term interest rates near zero and continue the asset purchases for some time, but as Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said in an interview this week, “There are some unintended consequences and side effects of these purchases that we are seeing play out,” referring to mortgage-bond purchases, which he thinks are contributing to skyrocketing home prices.  He had said previously that he was questioning whether the purchases are still needed.

To wit, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index for April was released and prices soared at the fastest pace since 2005, up nearly 15% from the previous year. That is up from March’s 13.4% gain.  The month-over-month gain was 1.6%.

Five cities – Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle – had the largest 12-month price increases on records dating back 30 years.

Sales of existing homes have fallen for four straight months, likely because soaring prices have discouraged some would-be buyers.

But demand is still strong enough that a typical home was on the market for just 17 days last month, the National Association of Realtors said.  Nearly 9 in 10 homes were on the market for less than a month.

Meanwhile, the Chicago PMI reading for June was 66.1, down from May’s 47-year high of 75.2 (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction), while the national ISM reading on manufacturing for June was 60.6 vs. May’s 61.2.

A reading on May construction spending was down 0.3%, worse than expected, while May factory orders, up 1.7%, were in line.

Initial jobless claims for the week fell 51,000 from a revised prior reading of 415,000 to a new post-pandemic low of 364,000.

Which brings us to today’s June jobs report, an increase of 850,000, far greater than expected, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 5.9%.

May was revised up from a disappointing 559,000 to 583,000.

Average hourly earnings rose 3.6% year-over-year, while U6, the underemployment rate was 9.8%, down from 10.2%.

The economy is still 6.8 million jobs shy of its pre-pandemic levels, though some experts say up to 1.9 million of these retired.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for second-quarter growth is at 7.8%.

Separately, the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday lifted its forecasts for economic growth, inflation and federal budget deficits this year, following the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief  package enacted in March.

Beyond 2021, however, the agency sees smaller deficits as a recovering economy boosts federal revenues.  Forecasts for the federal debt are also slightly lower than in the February report.  The federal debt will grow to 103% of the economy at the end of 2021 before dipping slightly between 2023 and 2025.

The agency estimated real gross domestic product growth of 7.4% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier, up from the 3.7% projected in February.

The agency also sees inflation accelerating by 2.8% in the fourth quarter from the previous year, before slowing to 2% in 2022, as measured by the Fed’s preferred inflation barometer, the personal-consumption expenditures price index.

The CBO’s deficit projection for this year is $3 trillion, more than it forecast in February but less than the $3.2 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2020.

Lastly, the U.S. won international backing for a global minimum rate of tax as part of a wider overhaul of the rules for taxing international corporations, a major step toward securing a final agreement on a key element of the Biden administration’s domestic spending plans.

Officials from 130 countries that met virtually Thursday agreed to a broad outline, including all of the Group of 20 major economies, even China and India.

But now each government has to pass laws in their respective legislatures that would ensure companies headquartered in their countries pay a minimum tax rate of at least 15% in each of the nations in which they operate, reducing opportunities for tax avoidance.

All of the nations will first wait to see what the U.S. Congress does.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is guiding the negotiations, estimates that governments lose revenue of between $100 billion and $240 billion to tax avoidance each year.

Well, give Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen credit for pushing the ball this far, Yellen calling it “a historic day for economic diplomacy.”

President Biden said in a statement: “This will level the playing field and make America more competitive. And it will allow us to devote the additional revenue we raise to making generational investments, which are necessary to keep America’s competitive edge razor sharp in today’s global economy.”

But Republicans flatly oppose corporate tax increases and some Democrats say they are wary.  And no one in Congress is focusing on proposed international tax changes these days.

Europe and Asia

We had the final PMI figures for manufacturing in the eurozone for June and for the region it was 63.4 vs. 63.1 in May.

Germany 65.1
France 59.0
Italy 62.2
Spain 60.4…278-month high
Ireland 64.0
Netherlands 68.8
Greece 58.6…254-month high

U.K. …63.9, down from May’s record high of 65.6.

Chris Williamson / IHS Markit

“Eurozone manufacturing continued to grow at a rate unbeaten in almost 24 years of survey history in June as demand surged with the further relaxation of Covid-19 containment measures and vaccination progress drove renewed optimism about the future.

“However, the sheer speed of the recent upsurge in demand has led to a sellers’ market as capacity and transportation constraints limit the availability of inputs to factories, which have in turn driven industrial prices higher at a rate not previously witnessed by the survey.  Manufacturers are clearly willing to pay more to ensure sufficient supplies of key inputs.

“Encouragingly, there are several survey indicators which add to hopes that the current spike in prices will prove transitory.

“Widespread issues such as port congestion and a lack of shipping containers should soon fade as the initial rebound from the pandemic passes.  Similarly, recent months have seen safety stock building as companies seek to protect themselves against potential future supply-chain disruptions, which has exacerbated the imbalance of demand and supply in the short term.  Once sufficient stocks are built, this effect should likewise fade.

“Finally, we have also seen the expansion of capacity via record employment growth and greater capital expenditure on business equipment and machinery. This expansion should raise output in sectors that are currently straining to meet demand, and hence remove some of the upward pressure on prices for these goods.”

Separately, the unemployment rate in the euro area for May was 7.9%, down from 8.1% in April 2021 and up from 7.5% in May 2020.

Germany 3.7%, France 7.5%, Italy 10.5%, Spain 15.3%, Netherlands 3.3%, Ireland 7.8%.

A flash estimate on June inflation for the eurozone came in at 1.9%, a tick down from May’s 2.0%; 0.9% annualized ex-food and energy.

Brexit: The European Union and the United Kingdom agreed Wednesday to suspend their sausage fight for three months.  Instead, some post-Brexit trade checks that were to go into effect on Thursday, including those on British sausages, were delayed to give both sides more time to come up with an equitable agreement.

Britain and the EU have been in a spat over post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. that borders the 27-nation bloc, for months, with London arguing that the terms of planned checks between Britain and Northern Ireland aren’t realistic.

The divorce deal agreed by both sides means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., part of a deal that would keep the border on the island of Ireland open, a key to the now decades-old peace process in Northern Ireland.

Turning to Asia…in China, we had some important data for June.  The official government manufacturing PMI, courtesy of the National Bureau of Statistics, was 50.9, the weakest since February, albeit still expansion.  The non-manufacturing figure was 53.5, a 4- month low.  Supply chain issues continue to hinder exports, ditto raw material costs and port disruptions.

Caixin’s private manufacturing PMI came in at 51.3.  A reading on services comes Sunday.

Japan’s final June manufacturing reading was 52.4, with services reported next week.

A key report on May retail sales, while down 0.4% from the prior month, was up 8.2% year-over-year.  May industrial production was up 22% Y/Y.

Japan’s economy is expected to expand by an annualized 0.5% in the second quarter, after posting a sharp 3.9% decline in Q1.

Separately, South Korea’s June manufacturing PMI was 53.9; Taiwan’s 57.6, down from May’s 62.0.

Street Bytes

--Wall Street closed out its fifth straight quarterly gain Wednesday, continuing its comeback from the steep drop of early 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.  The S&P 500 gained 8.2% in the second quarter and finished out the first half up 14.4%.

Stocks have been pushing higher on optimism the economy will continue to strengthen and that the Federal Reserve will not be hiking interest rates for a while longer.

At the same time, inflation concerns have ameliorated some, investors convinced the rise in prices on some key products like food, oil and lumber – is temporary, and we’ve seen lumber crash.  But now its earnings season.

For the week, all three major averages finished today at new closing highs…seven in a row for the S&P 500, the first time since 1997.  The solid jobs report helped.

The Dow Jones rose 1.0% to 34786, the S&P 1.7% to 4352, and Nasdaq 1.9% to 14639.

The S&P is up 95% since the March 23, 2020, pandemic low; the best such run in that short a time since the 1930s.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.04%  2-yr. 0.23%  10-yr. 1.42%  30-yr. 2.04%

No inflation to see here, officer.

--The average price for a gallon of gasoline rose 2 ½ cents from last week to $3.09 per gallon Monday, according to travel and fuel price tracking app GasBuddy.

The national average heading into the holiday weekend was 92 cents higher than at this time last year.

With the economy rapidly recovering from the 15-month-long pandemic, demand for fuel is rising and pushing prices to levels not seen since 2014.  And hurricane season always carries the prospect of higher prices if a storm affects oil drilling and refining on the Gulf Coast.  Tropical Storm Elsa, now Hurricane Elsa, has the potential to make such news early next week.

This month, the Energy Information Administration predicted gasoline would average $2.92 a gallon for the April-September summer driving season, up from $2.07 a gallon for the same period last year.  For the full year, the EIA estimates regular gasoline will average $2.77 a gallon.

Related to the above, I’ve noted over the course of the pandemic on just how few cars have been filling commuter parking lots for trains heading into New York City, and despite a broad reopening in the Big Apple, there are still very few cars being parked in my area.

As in I was surmising that aside from those still working predominantly at home, you have a lot who are eschewing the train for driving at least part of the way into New York.

So this week Aaron Elstein of Crain’s New York Business reported on how bridge and tunnel traffic has almost rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  But subway and bus ridership remain more than 50% down.

As Elstein writes:

“If that trend holds, it could portend a bleak future. Air quality and the economy would suffer if roads regularly gridlock and revenue shortfalls force subways and commuter railroads to reduce service.”

In cities such as Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, car traffic is hitting fresh highs while public-transit ridership is flat, according to DataTrek Research.

Lastly, an FDU (Fairleigh Dickinson University) poll did find that 26% of New Jersey workers who started working from home during the pandemic don’t think they will ever go back to the office.

Another 37% said they expect to be going back later this year and 27% said they have started returning to the office, the poll found.

--United Airlines ordered 270 new airliners, as rumored, which will be followed by 25,000 new jobs, as the airline on Tuesday announced its “United Next” strategy to meet post-pandemic travel demands and grow the company.

United plans to add another 5,000 employees at its Newark Liberty hub, the airline’s largest, and roll out a new customer service app.

“This is much more than an airplane purchase,” CEO Scott Kirby said during a call with reporters.  “For customers, what matters most is the signature interiors, seat back entertainment (screens), retrofitting the existing fleet, the fastest Wi-Fi in the skies, and 1-for-1 space overhead for bags that frees up flight attendants to be customer service agents.”

The 200 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and 70 Airbus A321neo represent the largest order in United history.  And it’s the largest by a U.S. airline since American Airlines ordered 460 new aircraft from Boeing and Airbus in 2011.

The new fleet will replace the smaller 50-seat jets on regional routes and will burn less fuel than older aircraft.

United said it expects to resume its full schedule of 430 flights from Newark soon.

--Ryanair carried 5.3 million passengers last month, figures published on Friday show.  This number would be well ahead of the 4 million that CEO Michael O’Leary targeted when the group published financial results in May.

At that time, he noted that if the airline reached 4 million passengers in June, it could increase that to between 7 million and 9 million in July.

However, increased caution among EU states and the U.K. about the Delta variant could dampen hopes of a summer boom in post-pandemic bookings.

Europe’s biggest airline said that a total of 8.1 million flew in its fiscal first quarter, which ended on June 30, 1.8 million in May.

--TSA checkpoint travel numbers vs. 2019

7/1…103 percent of 2019 level…yes 103…
6/30…75
6/29…77
6/28…84
6/27…82…pandemic high of 2,167,380 travelers
6/26…81
6/25…78
6/24…77

--Ford Motor Co. said the computer-chip shortage will force it to cut output across more than a half-dozen U.S. factories in July, a sign that the supply-chain troubles could take longer to ease than auto-industry executives previously believed.

Ford said Wednesday that its pickup truck factories in Michigan, Kentucky and Missouri will reduce or stop production for much of this month, while an Explorer plant in Chicago will be idled for the entire month.

The Chicago plant and the factories that assemble the pickup trucks – Ford’s biggest moneymaker – had halted production earlier this spring because of the chip shortage but had been back to full tilt in recent weeks, a spokeswoman said.

Ford and other auto makers have said they expect the chip shortage to begin to ease in the third quarter but cautioned that the situation is fluid.

--Tesla said it delivered 201,250 vehicles in the quarter, a record but a bit short of Wall Street estimates of 207,000 vehicles, according to FactSet.  But this was better than first-quarter sales of 185,000 and put the company on a path to double last year’s annual deliveries of just under 500,000.

The Model 3/Y led the way with 199,360 in second-quarter deliveries, followed by the Model S/X at just 1,890.

But Tesla’s aspirations in China were dealt a blow over the weekend after the government ordered almost all the cars it’s sold in the nation – more than 285,000 – be fixed to address a safety issue.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement on Saturday that the action involves 211,256 locally produced Model 3 vehicles and 35,665 imported ones, as well as 38,599 China-made Model Ys.

The Chinese agency said the vehicles’ autopilot systems can be activated automatically, potentially leading to crashes from sudden acceleration.  In most cases, however, the fix should be able to be made remotely with an online update to the cars’ active cruise control feature and Tesla was upgrading the software for free.

Ergo, what seemed a serious matter with the blaring headline…something that would impact the share price…wasn’t as bad as it looked. At least that’s how the market reacted.

--As for the rest of the auto industry and second quarter car sales, General Motors reported a nearly 40% increase compared with the same period a year ago.  GM’s sales were also up compared with the first quarter, but less so, rising 10% over that period.

Sales for Stellantis NV increased 32% in the second quarter, compared with a year ago.  The Jeep brand owner’s growth from the first quarter was just 3%.

Ford said its sales rose 9.6% in the second quarter, with the company reporting strong SUV and EV sales, including 12,975 units of its Mustang Mach-E SUV in the first six months of this year.

But Ford did say its total U.S. sales for June were down 26.9% compared with a year earlier, even as EV sales jumped 117% in the month.

Volkswagen AG reported its best first-half U.S. sales in nearly a half-century, even as it manages tight supplies.

Toyota’s second-quarter sales increased 73% over the prior year, but showed signs of slowing in June, down about 35,000 vehicles from the month before. Rival Honda Motor Co. reported a Q2 increase of nearly 66%, while its rate of sales declined in June from May.

Hyundai Motor Co. sold 240,005 vehicles in the April-to-June period, up 69% increase from a year ago, though here too the pace in June slowed considerably from May.

New-vehicle sales in the first half of the year are expected to reach about 8.3 million units, according to an estimate from J.D. Power, a 32% increase over the same period in 2020 and up nearly 1% from the first half of 2019.

The rate of sales slowed considerably at the end of Q2, falling to an annualized selling pace of 15.4 million, according to research firm Wards Intelligence. That is down from April, when the industry was on pace to sell nearly 19 million vehicles for the year.

Analysts attribute the deceleration to falling dealership inventory.  The diminishing selection is driving prices to record highs.

--Meanwhile, on a somewhat related topic, chip maker Intel Corp. is delaying production of one of its newest chips to improve performance, the first significant product setback under new Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger as he seeks to rebuild the company’s competitiveness.

Intel now is planning to start producing the next generation of central processing units for servers – the brains of those machines – in early 2022 after previously saying it would be ready late this year, a company official said Tuesday.

The server-chip market is one of the largest, fastest-growing and most competitive in chip-making.  Intel generated $5.6 billion in revenue from its data-center business in the first quarter, roughly a quarter of all sales.

Data-center demand has jumped in recent years with the shift toward cloud computing, where people’s data is stored in huge data centers.

While Intel has long dominated the data-center chip business, rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has released chips in recent years that meet or exceed Intel’s in performance metrics.

Separately, Gelsinger said the shortage of semiconductors that’s hurting industries from automotive to consumer electronics will bottom out in the second half of this year before starting to improve.

“I don’t expect the chip industry is back to a healthy supply-demand situation until ’23,” he said in an interview.  “For a variety of industries, I think it’s still getting worse before it gets better.”

President Xi will have something to say about this with this threats to Taiwan.

--Shares in Facebook climbed 4% on Monday to close at $355.64 per share, pushing its market capitalization above $1 trillion for the first time. That makes Facebook the fifth U.S. company to surpass the feat, joining Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet.

Facebook went public in May 2012, debuting with a market cap of $104 billion.

The latest gains came after a federal judge dismissed antitrust lawsuits brought against it by the Federal Trade Commission and a group of state attorneys general.  That deals a significant blow to attempts by regulators to rein in tech giants.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled Monday that the lawsuits were “legally insufficient” and didn’t provide enough evidence to prove that Facebook was a monopoly.  The ruling dismisses the complaint but not the case, meaning the FTC could refile another complaint.

Facebook has faced a series of setbacks in recent years around regulation, privacy and efforts to fight election interference. But despite the issues, the company makes more money on advertising and adds more users.

--In keeping with the above, a Fox News survey of registered voters found that 63 percent believe Facebook has too much power.  By comparison, 68 percent of respondents said they believe the federal government has too much power and 65 percent said they think the Internal Revenue Service has too much power.

Voters aren’t much more fond of other Big Tech mainstays, with 55 percent believing Google has too much power, 53 percent saying Twitter has too much power and 52 percent saying the same about Apple. Fifty-one percent said Amazon has too much power, the same percentage who said the FBI is too powerful.

So then it might be surprising that 70 percent of respondents say they have a Facebook account, 76% have an Amazon account, and 81 percent a Google-related account, though the percentage of Facebook users is down four percentage points from 2018.

--Robinhood Financial has been ordered to pay nearly $70 million to resolve “systemic supervisory failures” that resulted in “significant harm” to millions of customers after the brokerage misled them, exposed them to risky trading tools and failed to supervise its technology, a failing that led to trading outages, according to an industry regulator on Wednesday.

The online brokerage will pay a $57 million penalty and nearly $13 million in restitution to thousands of harmed clients.  It was the largest penalty ever issued by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, according to the agency, which is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission.  FINRA regulates brokerage firms.

--Didi, the leading Chinese ride-hailing platform, made its Wall Street debut on Wednesday, capping a year in which ride-hailing and travel companies have struggled to overcome intermittent pandemic lockdowns.

Didi began trading at $16.82 on the New York Stock Exchange, up from a $14-a-share offering price, but interest cooled over the course of the first day and the shares closed at $14.20, valuing the company at more than $69 billion.

Wall Street continues to embrace fast-growing tech companies regardless of their ability to turn a profit. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, in particular, have proved to be profligate money losers, often burning through billions in cash each year.

Didi is no exception, having lost $1.6 billion last year, though it reported a profit of $30 million in the first quarter of 2021. Revenues declined 8 percent to $21.63 billion last year because of the pandemic, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Investors are likely to be wary of regulators in Didi’s home country, as China’s antitrust authorities have begun to aggressively scrutinize the country’s big internet companies. 

In April, Didi was forced to issue a statement, vowing to “promote the development and prosperity of socialist culture and science” and to strictly obey the law.  The regulatory pressure raises questions about whether Didi will be allowed to grow large enough to consistently generate profits.

So I wrote all the preceding Thursday.  Today, out of nowhere, though in keeping with recent Chinese government policy, the ‘cyberspace administration’ said it had launched a new investigation into Didi to protect national security and the public interest.  Didi said it would cooperate with authorities.

For now the company isn’t allowed to sign up new users, while I’m sure the government is pilfering all the existing user data, if it hadn’t already.

The shares did finish the week at $15.40, still above the IPO price.

--I missed a report on Southern California’s home prices last week I just need to get down for the record.

The six-county region’s median sales price rose a whopping 24.7% from May 2020 to a record $667,000 this past May, according to data firm DQNews.

Sales also surged from a year earlier.

But the big leap in numbers from a year earlier is partly due to a once-in-a-lifetime comparison.

The data reflect closed sales, meaning the 2020 data covered mostly deals that opened escrow during March and April 2020 – the height of the coronavirus lockdowns. At the time, sales had plunged and price growth slowed.  Recall, there were no ‘open houses’ as we knew them.

But the market roared back to life as the lockdowns eased.

In Los Angeles County, the median home price rose 25% to a record $775,000 in May, while sales climbed 117%.

In Orange County, the median price rose 19.3% to a record $895,000, while sales climbed 113.4%.

In San Diego County, the median home price rose 22.9% to a record $725,000, while sales climbed 81.7%.

--Krispy Kreme Inc. went public again, closing its first day of trading Thursday at $21, compared with its initial public offering price of $17 apiece.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based doughnut chain went private after it was bought by JAB Holding Col. In 2016 for around $1.35 billion.  The company earlier went public in 2000.  Following the company’s latest offering, JAB will own roughly 78%.

The company is not known for making money.  For the first quarter ended April 4, Krispy Kreme logged $321.8 million in net revenue, but still reported a net loss of $3.1 million.

--Jeff Bezos announced that the fourth passenger on his space tourism company Blue Origin’s first crewed flight will be Wally Funk, a participant of the Mercury 13 program, which sought to recruit women astronauts in the 1960s.

Funk, 82, will become the oldest person to fly to space once Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket launches on July 20, the company said. 

Funk was also the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector and first female National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator, Blue Origin said.

She will join Bezos and his brother Mark, along with an unidentified person who paid $28 million at auction to secure a seat on the six-seat craft’s inaugural flight.

But then Thursday, Sir Richard Branson announced he’ll fly to the edge of space on July 11, or very soon after, as a passenger in the back of the Unity rocket plane his Virgin Galactic company has been developing in the U.S. for the better part of two decades.

Branson’s intention is to introduce a commercial spaceflight service, with some 600 individuals having lodged deposits to take the ride.

Branson said: “It’s one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it’s another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality.”

--For good reason, radio shock jock Howard Stern’s fans are pissed that he is taking the entire summer off after signing a new deal with Sirius XM said to be worth $500 million.

It appears the “King of All Media” negotiated a clause in the contract to give him a break between the end of June and early September.

But Sirius XM subscribers are revolting, saying Stern – who usually spends time at his Hamptons spread during the summer – has to honor their monthly commitment, lest they begin to cancel their subscriptions.

Foreign Affairs

Afghanistan: It was a sad day Friday for Afghans, as after nearly 20 years, the U.S. military left Bagram Airfield, the epicenter of its war to oust the Taliban and hunt down the Al Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.

The airfield was handed over to the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces in its entirety.

The U.S. will continue to maintain a significant security presence for two missions…to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and to help secure the international airport.

But the bulk of the last 2,500 to 3,500 U.S. troops have left Afghanistan, months before President Biden’s promise that they would be gone by Sept. 11.

U.S. military officials, however, are far from sanguine about the withdrawal.  On Tuesday, General Scott Miller, a top commander in the country, said Afghans could face “very hard times” if its leadership is unable to unite once international troops leave.

By some reports insurgents had taken as many as 100 of 370 districts since May, though Afghan forces have retaken a few of them.  The Taliban is nonetheless encircling major cities and is closing in on Kabul.

“The security situation is not good right now,” said Gen. Miller in a rare news conference.

“Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if this continues on the trajectory it’s on right now,” he added.  “That should be a concern to the world.”

He accused the Taliban of failing to reduce violence in line with an agreement it struck with the U.S.

Iran: Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States took necessary and appropriate action when it launched air strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria last Sunday, killing a reported four militants, while sending a strong message.  It was the second time in five months President Biden ordered retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed groups. This time it was in response to drone attacks by the militia against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq.

U.S. officials believe Iran is behind a ramp-up in drone and periodic rocket attacks, with the lethality of the drones being used increasing rapidly.

“We took necessary, appropriate, deliberate action that is designed to limit the risk of escalation, but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message,” Blinken told reporters in Rome.

Meanwhile, in a meeting between Blinken and new Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in Rome, Lapid expressed serious reservations about the Iran nuclear deal being put together in Vienna.

Blinken told Lapid that Washington would remain in close contact with Israel over the Iran negotiations.  Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a nationalist atop a cross-partisan coalition, has hewed to the opposition of his conservative predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, whose caps on projects with bomb-making potential Israel deemed too lax.

Israel: Foreign Minister Lapid officially dedicated the Israeli Embassy in the United Arab Emirates this week, Lapid saying the Biden administration is “positive and excited” about ties between Israel and the UAE, and the prospect of Israel establishing diplomatic relations with more Arab countries, Lapid said in a briefing with reporters.

However, two days after meeting Secretary of State Blinken in Rome, Lapid said Washington “says that [normalizations] require us to make an effort with the Palestinians,” contrary to the Trump administration, which “gave a sense that [the Abraham Accords] were instead of progress on the Palestinian front, or a way to prove it’s unnecessary.”

Lapid was skeptical about the chances of an agreement with the Palestinians.

“Don’t shoot 4,000 rockets at Israelis if you want to get help,” Lapid said regarding reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

China: Aside from Xi Jinping’s militaristic speech Thursday, the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reported:

“China has begun construction of what independent experts say are more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen, a building spree that could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.

“Commercial satellite images obtained by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., show work underway at scores of sites across a grid covering hundreds of square miles of arid terrain in China’s Gansu province.  The 109 nearly identical construction sites contain features that mirror those seen at existing launch facilities for China’s arsenal of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

“The acquisition of more than 100 new missile silos, if completed, would represent a historic shift for China, a country that is believed to possess a relatively modest stockpile of between 250 and 350 nuclear weapons.  The actual number of new missiles intended for those silos is unknown but could be much smaller.  China has deployed decoy silos in the past.”

Nuclear arms expert Jeffrey Lewis said the silos are probably intended for a Chinese ICBM known as the DF-41, which can carry multiple warheads and reach targets as far away as 9,300 miles, potentially putting the U.S. mainland within its reach.

The United States must attempt to hold arms control talks with the Chinese.

I’ve noted for years that unlike with our relationship with Russia, where each side has a good idea what the other has, we have no real idea what China’s capabilities are.  We say we do.  We don’t, much of their activity being underground and hidden from sight.

Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic members of foreign affairs panels in both houses of Congress expressed renewed concern to President Biden over China’s “ceaseless assault” on democracy to Hong Kong, lawmakers asking what his administration was “doing to coordinate with allies and partners to ensure that the private sector” knows about the risk to U.S. citizens and interests in Hong Kong posed by the sweeping national security law.

But back to President Xi and his militaristic tone….

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Beijing’s new ‘social-credit’ system that offers privileges based on conformity to state plans is the definition of Orwellian.  The reeducation and work camps for the Uighurs and the repudiation of its treaty promise of autonomy to Hong Kong show how much the Party fears its own people – and how little it cares about outside criticism.

“The threat to the world depends on how this combination of Communism and nationalism asserts itself in the years ahead. The signs are not good – from its border clashes with India, its takeover of islands in the South China Sea, its Belt and Road initiative that burdens poor countries with debt, and its brazen cyber theft of U.S. intellectual property and secrets.

“Perhaps most troubling, the Party is trying to export its censorship to free societies.  Witness its economic warfare against Australia for seeking an independent probe into the origins of Covid-19.  Or its demand that foreigners stay mum on Taiwan and Hong Kong or risk economic punishment. The strategy has worked against Disney and the NBA.

“The risks for the Party is that all of this is producing a global backlash. Western powers have banned Huawei from telecom networks.  How to respond to Chinese aggression was front and center at the G-7 leadership discussions. Western companies are increasingly wary of the risks of business in China, despite its huge market, and a bipartisan consensus in the U.S. now believes the Party seeks regional, and perhaps global, dominance.

“But the biggest risks for China’s ruling Communists are internal: a rapidly aging population while tens of millions remain poor, a huge debt overhang, political control that blocks more economic reform, and public expectations for continued prosperity.  Once unleashed as in China, nationalist fervor can also be hard to control. Will the Party and Mr. Xi, like Tojo’s Japan in 1941, tempt fate with aggression that risks a disastrous war?

“The great imponderable about this 100th anniversary is how China would have fared had Chiang defeated Mao.  The democracy and prosperity of Taiwan offers the best evidence for this counter-factual.  Alas, we must cope with a Communist Party that is the gravest risk to the democratic world since the U.S.S.R.”

North Korea: In yet another vague declaration, leader Kim Jong Un slammed senior officials for causing a “great crisis” in the fight against the coronavirus by mismanaging prevention measures, state media reported Wednesday.

Kim made the comments at a ruling party politburo meeting where an unspecified member of the powerful five-member presidium was reportedly recalled.

“Senior officials in charge of important state affairs neglected the implementation of the important decisions of the party on taking organizational, institutional, material, scientific and technological measures as required by the prolonged state emergency epidemic prevention campaign,” Kim said at the meeting, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

This “caused a crucial case of creating a great crisis in ensuring the security of the state and safety of the people and entailed grave consequences.”

But state media didn’t spell out what “crucial” lapse had occurred.

France: In France’s second round of regional voting last weekend, President Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique en March (LREM) and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) were the two biggest losers.

Though Macron and Le Pen are expected to face off again in next year’s presidential election, neither of their parties won any of the country’s 13 regional authorities.

The defeat was especially bitter for Le Pen, who after all these years, and in various reincarnations of her party, still has yet to win a single region, which would do wonders for the far-right party’s credibility.

The conservative party Les Republicains (LR) captured two regions that Le Pen had a good shot of taking.  Three of the LR candidates, including Xavier Bertrand, are seen as potential right-wing challengers to Macron next year, siphoning off support from Le Pen.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: 56% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 42% disapprove, 55% of independents approve (June 1-18).

Rasmussen: 48% approve, 50% disapprove (July 2).

--Talk about a total s---show.  Tuesday afternoon, we were suddenly given updated results of the Democratic primary for mayor in New York, which showed Eric Adams with a slight lead over Kathryn Garcia.  Then later that day, we learned the count was erroneous…that elections officials had stupidly counted 135,000 extra test ballots alongside 800,000 legitimate Election Day and early votes.  It was an egregious, and outrageous, mistake, totally inexcusable.

So Wednesday we had a release of the corrected vote count, which showed Adams with a slim 51.1% to 48.9% lead over Garcia, just 15,000 votes, and with 125,000 absentee ballots, or roughly 14% of the vote, left to be tallied up…a final result expected sometime next week.

Tuesday’s blunder shined a spotlight on the Board of Elections, chaired by Republican lawyer Frederic M. Umane, who said in an interview on Wednesday: “Obviously this was a very bad error that was made and it should have been detected.  It wasn’t a few votes, it was 135,000. Someone should have noticed that.  It was a careless error that should not have occurred.”

While the initial faulty results will have no bearing on determining the final winner, it calls into question the board of elections’ ability to determine a winner using the new ranked-choice voting system, which had allowed primary voters to select five candidates in order of preference and have their backup choices count if their top picks are eliminated.

Bottom line, this was a national embarrassment.

The outstanding absentee ballots are said to favor Adams as 44% came from state Assembly districts where he led in the early and election-day voting.

--As for the disastrous condominium tower collapse in Surfside, Florida, some stories are so heavily covered there is little left to say, but there has clearly been some egregious behavior at the condo board level and with building management. 

Among the things we learned in the past week was that the president of the condo board resigned in 2019, partly in frustration over what she saw as the sluggish response to an engineer’s report that identified major structural damage the previous year.

Anette Goldstein was among five members of the seven-member board to resign in two weeks that fall, according to minutes from an Oct. 3 meeting, as reported by the Washington Post, at a time when the condo association was consumed by contentious debate over the multimillion-dollar repairs recommended by the 2018 report.

“We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” Goldstein wrote in a September 2019 resignation letter. “This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.”

Debate over the cost and scope of the work, along with turnover on the volunteer board, dragged out preparations for the repairs for three years, according to previously unpublished correspondence, condo board minutes and other records kept by the homeowners association.

Despite increasingly dire warnings from the board, many condo owners balked at paying for the extensive improvements, which ballooned in price from $9 million to more than $15 million over the past three years as the building continued to deteriorate, records show.

Another former board member, who left before the 2018 engineering report, told the Post, “It took a lot of time to get the ball rolling, and of course there was sticker shock. Nobody truly believed the building was in imminent danger.”

Miami Dade County requires buildings to be inspected and recertified as safe after 40 years.  The condominium building, Champlain Towers South, was constructed in 1981.

According to an engineering review by Frank P. Morabito in 2018, there was “major structural damage” to a concrete slab below the pool deck, caused by a flaw that limited water drainage, which was noted in the review that outlined the repairs needed for the 40-year recertification.

A resident told The Post that minutes before Champlain Towers South came down, she noticed that a section of the pool deck and a street-level parking area had collapsed into the parking garage below.  Experts have said the collapse appeared to involve a failure at the lowest levels of the building or in the parking garage beneath it.

By the time of the collapse, the board had rallied additional support for the repairs and it unanimously voted in favor of a $15 million special assessment to pay for the upgrades to the building on April 13.

But even then, residents were split on the costs and details of the proposed spending and asked the board to consider a lower assessment, according to the Post.

Well, you know the rest.  Many of these folks are now dead, leaving relatives and friends to mourn and pickup the pieces.

And now we have Hurricane Elsa looming.

--We note the passing of former two-time defense secretary and longtime GOP public servant Donald Rumsfeld.  He was 88.

Rumsfeld’s roles overseeing the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and efforts to transform the U.S. military made him one of the most consequential, and controversial, leaders of the Pentagon.

Rumsfeld’s political career goes back to the 1960s as a rebellious young Republican congressman, favored counselor to President Richard Nixon, right-hand man to President Gerald Ford and Middle East envoy for President Ronald Reagan.  And he was successful in the business world.

But his greatest influence and notoriety came during a six-year reign as defense secretary under President George W. Bush.  Initially, Rumsfeld was hailed for his military response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but then his handling of the Iraq War was harshly criticized for being slow to draft an effective strategy for countering an Iraqi insurgency.  He also failed to set a clear policy for the treatment of prisoners, which helped lead to the disaster of Abu Ghraib.

Bush was finally forced to let Rumsfeld go in late 2006 – 3 ½ years into the Iraq War and just after an election in which Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress.

Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary earlier before under Ford, was the only person ever to get a second shot at the position.  He held the record as the youngest Pentagon leader, then under Bush, he became the oldest.

Rumsfeld was a complex man.  A hardcore, Midwestern conservative, he was a hawk on defense, but also strongly supported civil rights legislation as a young congressman, worked on anti-poverty programs under Nixon and promoted microenterprises as a wealthy investor.

Known privately to be charming and generous, outwardly he was confrontational, gruff and often belittling in a manner many found offensive.

Douglas Feith, Rumsfeld’s senior civilian policy adviser at the Pentagon, wrote of his former boss in a memoir: “He wielded a courageous and skeptical intellect.  But his style of leadership did not always serve his own purposes: He bruised people and made personal enemies, who were eager to strike back at him and try to discredit his work.”

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain labeled Rumsfeld the worst defense secretary ever.  James Schlesinger, himself a former defense secretary, gave Rumsfeld high marks for trying to revamp the military while grading him low as a “secretary of war.”

In a statement, former President George W. Bush hailed what he called Rumsfeld’s “steady service as a wartime secretary of defense – a duty he carried out with strength, skill, and honor.”

“A period that brought unprecedented challenges to our country and to our military also brought out the best qualities in Secretary Rumsfeld,” Bush said.  “A man of intelligence, integrity, and almost inexhaustible energy, he never paled before tough decisions, and never flinched from responsibility.

“He brought needed and timely reforms to the Department of Defense, along with a management style that stressed original thinking and accountability.  As Commander in Chief, I especially appreciated how Don took his job personally and always looked out for the interests of our servicemen and women.  He was a faithful steward of our armed forces, and the United States of America is safer and better off for his service.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Few men have had more consequential careers in public and private life than Donald Rumsfeld, the senior adviser to three Presidents and business executive, who died Tuesday at age 88.

“A conservative Midwesterner, he served in the Navy and won a seat in Congress from Illinois in 1962.  Richard Nixon spotted his talent and brought him in as an adviser. His star rose quickly and he became chief of staff and then secretary of Defense for Gerald Ford, the youngest Pentagon chief at age 43.

“Outside of politics, Rummy, as he was sometimes known, was the CEO of G.D. Searle, the pharmaceutical firm, from 1977-1985 and advised Gilead Sciences in its early days as a director and chairman of the board.

“Rumsfeld was most controversial during his second stint as Defense secretary in managing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He pressed the military to refine its invasion plans that in both cases achieved their goals quickly and with few casualties.  But he underestimated the strength and nature of the insurgency in Iraq, and he failed to change strategy.  President George W. Bush didn’t help by failing to settle disputes between State and Defense.  Mr. Bush replaced Rumsfeld in 2006 to implement the surge that prevented a U.S. defeat.

“Rumsfeld didn’t suffer naifs, or journalists, gladly.  But we always enjoyed the give and take and learned a great deal listening to him.  He was a patriot willing to challenge recalcitrant bureaucracies, which we need more of today.”

--Bill Cosby was suddenly freed from prison on Wednesday after Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction.

It was a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad.”

The state Supreme Court said that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

Cosby, 83, served nearly three years of a 3- to 10-year sentence after being found guilty of drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.  He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era.

Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence – the comic’s damaging deposition testimony in a lawsuit brought by Constand – brought charges against him days before the 12-year statute of limitations ran out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby.  There was no evidence that promise was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the former district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby’s arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.”

The justices said that overturning the conviction, and barring any further prosecution, “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the trial judge allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s.  Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of criminal behavior on Cosby’s part.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices voiced concern about what they saw as the judiciary’s increasing tendency to allow testimony that crosses the line into character attacks.

The court declined to say whether the other accusers should have been allowed to testify, considering it moot given the finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.

--Jake Tapper interviewed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as part of his “State of the Union” program last Sunday and I found Romney’s comments on the director of national intelligence’s report on 144 sightings of what they call unidentified aerial phenomena interesting.

Tapper: I know a lot of people joke about this, but you’re a national security hawk.  How concerned are you about these objects? And where do you think they come from?

Romney: Well, I don’t believe they’re coming from foreign adversaries.

If they were, why, that would suggest that they have a technology which is in a whole different sphere than anything we understand.  And, frankly, China and Russia just aren’t there. And neither are we, by the way. So I’m not worried about it from a national security standpoint.

If, for some reason, these came from another system, if you will, another alien society, which I, frankly, would find hard to believe, but I guess all things are possible, that would be fascinating, interesting.  I know there are, they say, trillions of galaxies out there, so who knows what might have developed somewhere else?

But that would make me more fascinated, not fearful.  And I guess I also think that we have a lot more significant challenges ahead of us right here and now than worrying about those things.

The emergence of China as the dominant player in the world, that gives me concern.  The warming of our planet, that gives me concern. The amount of debt we’re taking on as a nation, that gives me a concern.  So I’d focus on those things and infrastructure before I’d give a lot of attention to unidentified flying objects.

I’m a big fan of Sen. Romney, but my comment would be that if it’s not Russia, China or a hidden program out of the United States, and it was alien, that would make me fearful, first and foremost.  The fact is, IF it’s not from our world, why do these incidents seem to happen around strategic assets, particularly along the coasts?

There was a time when I used to think, heck, a discovery of alien life out there would unite the world, but the more I think about all the findings, or non-findings, you can’t help but be a bit disconcerted.

Sen. Romney did go on to tell Jake Tapper he had great concerns about global warming, recognizing solutions would take time, “to get the whole world to reduce our emissions.  There are some places like China and Brazil and Indonesia and India which are going to continue to grow their emissions into the atmosphere.  So that’s a real concern.

“But we have a more immediate need, which is, while we’re waiting for that to occur over the decades, what are we going to do to protect from rising sea levels, from greater storms and from drought?

“And I, for instance, have introduced a piece of legislation, along with Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, to say, look, let’s put a commission together to really study how we can deal with these fires and to reduce the fuel load which exists in some of our forests of deadwood to make sure we’re getting rid of some of the kind of fuel that would allow for these conflagrations to overwhelm us.

“So, we have got some work to do.  And I believe it’s time for us to address the here and now, as well as the international effort we’re going to have over some decades to try and reduce our CO2 emissions.”

--The temperature in Boston reached 100 degrees Wednesday for the first time in a decade, according to the National Weather Service.

Last weekend, Portland, Ore., reached 112 degrees on Sunday, breaking the all-time temperature record of 108 F, which was set just a day earlier.

Last Sunday at the Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore., it hit 110 degrees, breaking the all-time record of 108, and necessitating an hours-long delay in the competition until it cooled down.

--A Fox News poll shows that 69 percent of voters believe America is the greatest country to live in – but that sentiment has fallen 15 percentage points in the past decade.

In 2011, 84 percent of respondents said the U.S. was the greatest, and 83 percent echoed that sentiment in 2015.

The survey, released as the nation prepares to celebrate its independence this Sunday, found that voters under age 45 had the biggest decline in positive views since 2015, recording a drop of 21 percentage points.

Other groups with declining views included Democrats (20 percent), women (18 percent) and blacks (17 percent).

Asked whether the country’s best days were still ahead, 52 percent agreed, but 39 percent said those days are in the past.

In 2012, 63 percent said they looked forward to the country’s best days and 57 percent said that in 2009.

Broken down by political party, 67 percent of Democrats, 41 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of independents say the best days are ahead, while 24 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independents say those days are over.

As one who has been around the world a few times, yes, America is the greatest country to live in, but my enthusiasm is waning.  Ask me again after the 2024 election.

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

We thank our first responders and healthcare workers.

God bless America.

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Gold $1787
Oil $75.19

Returns for the week 6/28-7/2

Dow Jones  +1.0%  [34786]*
S&P 500  +1.7%  [4352]*
S&P MidCap  -0.6%
Russell 2000  -1.2%
Nasdaq  +1.9%  [14639]*

*Record closing highs

Returns for the period 1/1/21-7/2/21

Dow Jones +13.7%
S&P 500  +15.9%
S&P MidCap  +17.5%
Russell 2000  +16.8%
Nasdaq  +13.6%

Bulls 59.6
Bears 16.2…prior week’s split, 56.5 / 15.8

Enjoy the Fourth!

Brian Trumbore

   

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